


Career Day

by orphan_account



Series: Percy's Post-Secondary Journey [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Career Day, F/M, He wants the best for percy, He's just pushy sometimes, Percy Jackson want to Bake, Poseidon (Percy Jackson) is a Good Parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23200996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Percy Jackson doesn't have a parent to go to career day, Poseidon surprises him by showing up. Percy confronts him about his post-secondary dreams.Sequel to Percy Just Wants To Bake, but can be read as a stand-alone fic.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Paul Blofis/Sally Jackson
Series: Percy's Post-Secondary Journey [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667938
Comments: 3
Kudos: 142





	Career Day

**Author's Note:**

> i had fun with this one. i bet you can tell i've literally only been to nyc twice. native new yorkers pls dont kill me.

Percy really thought that the whole “Career Day” thing was something that kids did in elementary school, but apparently people did it in their senior year too. At least they did at AHS, his new school after Goode kicked him out for missing so much school when he got kidnapped by Hera. The school’s reasoning was that too many people were undecided with what they were going to major in for college. Percy himself wanted to learn more about how he could become the baker of his dreams. What classes did he need to take? How did he even apply for culinary school? He was sure that at least one chef had to show up, so the Career Day idea didn’t seem that bad. 

Of course, he definitely would’ve asked his mom to come but he knew that she’d drop everything to come. While this wouldn’t normally be a problem but of course the day that parents were supposed to come in was the same day that his mom had one of her book signings. He couldn’t tell her about this stupid school thing because she’d go with him and miss something she’d been looking forward to for the past couple weeks. Of course, this meant that he couldn’t ask Paul either because then he’d tell Sally and she’d get hurt that he didn’t ask her. All in all, Percy had resigned himself to coming without either of them. He explained this to Annabeth over Iris Message.

“I mean it’s not a big deal,” he shrugged, “I’m not pressed.”

She nodded, agreeing with him. 

“I don’t think tons of people will bring their parents anyway,” she said, “So don’t stress about it Perce. Have a good day at school for me ok? Try not to attract any monsters?”

“Of course Wise Girl! See you later! Love you.”

“Love you, Seaweed Brain.”

He swiped his hand through the mist, grabbed his backpack and headed out the door, locking it behind him. He ran down the stairs and took the familiar path towards the station. He hopped over the gate (he was a good guy, but that was a fee he was not about to pay), and drummed on his leg as he waited on the platform for the A. It was times like this that he wished he had a phone so that he could listen to music on the way to school. The train shot into the station, the familiar sound of the train lady.

“This is a Brooklyn Bound A Train.”

Percy stepped in and let it take him the three stops to school. 

Once he arrived, he hopped off and walked through a couple of side streets to where the school’s front door stood. The idea of Career Day kept coming into his mind.

He didn’t think it was that big a deal though, how many people would bring their parents to Career Day for seniors? When he walked into the school that morning a surprising amount of adults were gathered near the school’s front doors.

“Hey, Percy!” Emma, one of his few mortal friends at the school called out. She was standing next to a middle-aged man. Percy assumed that it was probably her dad. They shared the same dark curly hair. “This is my dad, he’s for career day. He’s a surgeon.”

“Hello sir,” Percy waved, smiling brightly, “I’m Percy, one of Emma’s friends.”

“Hello Percy, nice to meet you,” the doctor replied, shaking his hand, “Is one of your parents coming to present today?” Percy shook his head.

“Nah, they were both busy today,” he explained, “All good though.”

“Well, I’m gonna take my dad into the waiting area, but I’ll see you in homeroom?”

“Course! See ya, Emma!” Percy waved as she made her way into the school. He sort of felt self-conscious that he was alone, he was surprised to see that tons of parents had decided to show up and present. 

The warning bell rang, shocking him out of his train of thought. Some random rap music started blaring over the speakers, letting the students know that it was time to get to his class. He ran up the front steps and into the school. He stopped by his locker quickly, dropping off his books and running to his homeroom. As he stepped in the doorway he took his spot beside Emma and their other friend, Hasan.

“Hey man,” Hasan said, “My dad really wanted to come today. he kind of forced me. I tried to tell him that not a ton of people were interested in becoming a copyright analyst, but he just wouldn’t listen to me.” Hasan shrugged, “He’s here though, he made a PowerPoint presentation and everything.”

Emma laughed loudly, “That’s so good! Dude I will be very enraptured by your dad’s presentation.”

“I don’t know man, he uses Times New Roman.”

“That’s the best part,” Percy insisted, “But I can’t promise that’s I’ll be able to pay attention the whole time.”

The second bell rang, signifying the start of the day.   
“Settle down everyone, settle down,” Mr. Hynes, his homeroom teacher said, walking into the room, “As you know today is our Career Day and many of your parents have come to talk about their career and what courses they took to get there. That way all of you can get a better idea of how to take your next steps in your education.”

“Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing after school yet?” Emma whispered, “Because I have zero.”

“My dad wants me to either be a doctor or a lawyer,” Hasan shrugged, “I don’t want that for me, but I don’t have a better idea, so I guess I’ll probably go with it.”

“I think I want to be a baker,” Percy whispered back, “Cause like-”

“Do you have something you want to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Jackson?” Mr. Hynes asked him irritatedly, “Because clearly it is much more important than whatever I have to say.”

“No, sir.” 

“Right. As I was saying,” Percy and Hasan exchanged a look, rolling their eyes. “We will head down to the auditorium where we will watch the presentations for the first two periods of the day. Ok, everyone up.”

Percy cringed at the sound of the chairs scraping the floor, because, ew. The class erupted in volume as everyone left the room, making their way to the auditorium.

“So Percy the baker, huh?” Emma asked, “Sounds like a Hallmark movie. A hot young new college graduate opens a bakery and shows his sensitive side to the burnout journalist.”

“Or a Porno,” Hasan suggested, “Depends how much clothes Percy is wearing.”

Percy’s face was the colour of a firetruck. “Guys!” he scolded, “I have a girlfriend!”

“She can be the burnout journalist!” Emma suggested laughing loudly. They took their seats close to the front of the auditorium.

“Welcome, seniors to Career Day!” The principal said into the microphone, “We’re going to by the student’s last name A to Z. So that means we are going to start with Mrs. Anderson and Finish off with Mr. Zur.”

Percy couldn’t help but bounce his leg as different adults came up and explained what their job was. So far, he’d seen tones of people the highlights were definitely the Artist, Bus Driver, Funeral Director and a Dancer. The dancer was probably his favourite. It kind of seemed cool, but also definitely not something Percy could do for two reasons, The first being that he definitely lacked the training and second, he had zero rhythms. Funeral Director was definitely more of Nico’s thing than his, but it was pretty interesting too. But finally, Ms. Hunter gave him the information he was looking for.

“Hey everyone, my name is Alyssa Hunter and I am a professional pastry chef,” Hasan nudged him, “I have a bakery in the Upper West Side called Bake Sale if your interested and I have been baking professionally for 25 years. I went to France where I studied French cuisine and pastries at École Grégoire-Ferrandi.” Percy scribbled the name down on his hand, “I got into the industry by working as an apprentice to head chefs around France before returning home to the US and opening my own bakery. When I applied for École Grégoire-Ferrandi I had the average person’s knowledge about cooking and baking, it’s not something you need to be an expert on to go there. They teach you everything that you need to know. You don’t need to know french either, but it does help.” He definitely would not be leaning french, English was hard enough.

“And that’s about it. If you have any more questions, you can email me at alyssa.hunter@bakesale.corp. Thank you, everyone!”

Percy clapped more enthusiastically than he had for the other ones, earning him weird looks from some of the other students. He tuned out the next two presentations (Mr. Hyke and Ms. Ivory, a Hypnotherapist and a College Professor), before snapping to attention when the next presenter was called up.

“Next, we have Mr. Jackson, who works in Marine Conservation.”

Emma shot him a surprised look.

“I thought you said your parents weren’t coming?” Emma asked him quietly.

“I thought they weren’t either.” Percy replied quietly. Marine Conservation was a dead giveaway that it was his dad, but what the heck was he doing here? How did he even find out? He tried to think back to whenever he could’ve told him. Then it hit him, the Iris Message from this morning! Iris must’ve herd and sent it to his dad. 

And there he was, in all his godly glory, Poseidon, the god of the sea, and apparently, “Marine Conservationist”. It seemed that he switched out the Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts for a button-up shirt, dress pants and a Hawaiian patterned tie.

“Dude is that your dad?” Hasan asked him quietly. “I thought that you didn’t know the guy?”

“I know him,” Percy admitted, “We just don’t talk that much.”

Thankfully, it seemed like Hasan caught his drift, and he dropped the topic.

“Hello everyone, my name is Don Jackson,”  _ Ha _ , Percy laughed to himself,  _ Don. Very clever dad.  _ “I work with the Marine Conservation. I have always loved the ocean and when I was younger fish were my first friends.” Here, he caught Percy’s eye, like they were sharing an inside joke. It was actually kind of nice, here he was acting like an actual dad. He’d never had something like that before.

“Percy,” Emma whispered to him, “Your dad is a total DILF.”

Nope Nope, nope, no way. He’s done, nevermind he doesn’t need his dad here. That just made him regret everything.

“Emma! No!”

She giggled. “It’s true! He is smoking hot!”

Ew. Nope, not for him. Percy tuned Emma’s giggling out of his senses and looked back at his dad. He seemed to be explaining in detail about how he supposedly started working. Percy didn’t even know if any of the advice he was giving was real! Sometimes Poseidon would make eye contact with Percy, his eyes sparkling like there was a joke that Percy wasn’t hearing. Finally, after what seemed like years his dad had finished his presentation and walked off the stage. He definitely was going to talk to him at lunch. He waited through four more presentations (a plumber, Emma’s dad and a web designer) before the bell rang signalling the break between the first and second half of presentations.

“Hey, I’ll catch up with you guys later, okay? I gotta talk to my dad.”

“Okay Perce,” Hasan replied, “See you later!”

Percy weaved his way through the labyrinth of parents and students before he came across his dad in the corner talking to two other parents.

“And this is my son, Percy!” he called as Percy arrived in front of them, “Percy these are two of the other parents I’ve met today.”

“Uh, hi?”

“Hello Percy,” the woman on Poseidon’s left said, “We can go now if you’d like to talk to your father?”

“Yes please, if that’s ok?”

“Of course!”

“Percy my boy, how are you?” Poseidon said, patting him on the back, “Did you like my presentation? If you want I can give you a step by step. I’m sure you’ll do great, after all, you are my son.”

Percy was just standing there in shock.

“I can’t believe you came,” he said amazed. Poseidon just waved him off.

“Of course I came son,” he said to him sincerely, “I wouldn’t leave you without a parent here to represent you. Now, like I was saying, the University of Hawaii has a great marine biology program-” Percy was realizing what was going on. Poseidon was trying to set him up for marine biology. Well, now as good a time as any. “-you’d be close to me too. Hawaii is a wonderful place.”   
“Dad I don’t want to be a marine biologist.” Poseidon froze in his tracks. It was kind of funny actually, seeing an all-powerful god be caught off guard.

“Pardon?” Percy took a deep breath.

“I want to be a baker, I want to make cakes and pies. Marine Biology… well, it’s just not my thing. All the facts and stuff, I don’t think it’s for me.”

“But you’d be a natural! Everything would come to you with ease!”

“But it’s not what I want dad!” Their voices had raised in volume, attracting some stares from the people around them. He could feel some of the sinks bursting in the men’s washroom from his temper. He could see the water in the fountain outside the school sloshing with his father’s. Percy took a deep breath, trying to reign in his temper. “Look, dad. It’s just now what I want, ok?”

Poseidon looked him in the eye.

“And you’re sure that this is what you want to do?” Percy nodded silently. Poseidon sighed. “Ok then. I will support you, my son. I will ensure that you get the best education possible.” He hugged Percy tightly. “I love you, my son, I just want what’s best for you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Percy whispered, “I love you too.” If Percy was to rank some of the best things in the world a godly hug from his dad was definitely up there. It was warm, strong and smelt like the sea. Poseidon released Percy from his hug.

“Now, why don’t you introduce me to some of your mortal friends?”

Emily’s comment from earlier entered Percy’s mind making his face go red.

“Maybe later dad,” Percy said, “Do you think we could get some lunch first?” Poseidon smiled at him warmly.

“Of course.”


End file.
